BEYOND THE COLD WAR

Robert Hanssen's arrest reminded Americans that far from dying out with the cold war, the spying game is alive and well. And well funded too. With an annual price tag to U.S. taxpayers of about $30 billion--mostly for fancy satellites and eavesdropping equipment--skeptics might be forgiven for asking what all this spying is about.

Back in the early '90s, Russia's President Boris Yeltsin cut the number of U.S.-based spies in a show of goodwill. The U.S. cut its Russian operations too, all but closing down its Moscow shop, according to retired CIA officers. But as U.S.-Russian relations cooled in the mid-'90s...